19 Jan 2010
Working late, 2 am

Niobe loved the Daily Prophet building.  It was a converted warehouse with high ceilings and rustic, bare brick walls.  The main floor had desks and cubicles open to the rafters and by day a bank of high, yellowing windows bathed the bustling space with light.  At night, the entire space was almost noisy in how silent it was.  Even small noises seemed to echo, and the air could feel wet like the outdoors.  Niobe's cubicle was like a campfire in the woods, a green-shaded lamp the only light in the building. 

The witch was working late.  Not because she had to, but because she preferred it.  It was quiet.  She could smoke.  She could exist without feeling ashamed of herself.  Besides, there was no more fun and games to be had for Niobe Thursby who was through being young and stupid.  She was 33.  She should have been over that a decade ago, but no.  Her relationship with Dominik Wiedman had slowly pulled her away from her friends, away from reality.  And into a jail cell. 

She tapped her fingers on her desk.  Hunched over a keyboard.  An article about cauldron bottom thickness was staring at her half-written.  She was having to fight for the good stories these days.  Cuffe didn't trust her as much now, and so was trying to keep her busy with boring old rubbish about shipments of cauldrons coming in weighing half as much as they did when they'd been sent, the bottoms all eroded out. 

Niobe was bored just thinking about it.  Maybe she'd wrap up and go be a normal person and sleep in a bed. 

And then, strangest thing: an owl appeared with post.  It wasn't that owls wouldn't fly a letter at two in the morning - most people just weren't up writing them at such an hour. 

She took the bulky envelope from the owl without much inspection, fed it a treat and it was gone.  She didn't even spare a thought as to how it got in.  She inserted a pencil into a gap in the fold and ripppppp.  Immediately, the parcel seemed to spring to life - a bright red howler appeared.

WE WARNED YOU, THURSBY!

It began shouting its message at her.  At first, Niobe just rolled her eyes, crossed her arms and waited for it to be over.  But the envelope was still moving, something struggling to ... get out?

WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE! WE KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING! NOW YOU WILL LEARN TO DO AS YOU'RE TOLD! NOSY! MEDDLING! STUPID! UNSEEING, ENTITLED, WASTE OF A WAND! DIE! DIE! DIE!

It wasn't easy to ignore the words of the howler, but Niobe was on her feet with her wand drawn on the large, struggling envelope.  In the back of her mind, there was a debate going on about what this was all about.  She didn't remember being warned and she didn't know what was going to come out of that envelope.  She just knew she -

Before another second passed, something burst forth from the envelope straight at her.  She instinctively shot off a spell that erupted in a flash of light.  She was off running down the aisle between the cubicles without looking back.  Behind her was the sound of things crashing in the dark, the flicker of her lamp going out. 

She ducked into an office against the back wall and shut the door.  Her heart was racing and she couldn't bring herself to open the door again to see what was going on beyond the frosted glass window.  She shut her eyes tight, grit her jaw and forced herself to think.  Should she Apparate away? But what it was... a Dementor? The idea was fresh in her mind from what had happened earlier that month - a possible sighting in Hogsmeade when that man had keeled over in his beer.  She couldn't just lost track of it - someone could be killed.  That and she'd never know what it really was. 

After a shuddering breath she reached up and drew the shade.  "Expecto Patronum!"  A silvery, spectral lion erupted from her wand and with a flick of her tail, she bounded away through the walls.  To find Jonas Trevelyan.

"Come at once," it would tell him.  "Cornered something at the Daily Prophet and I need your help.  Be careful."

It had been several weeks -- at least since his last encounter with Magical Catastrophes -- since Jonas Trevelyan had contemplated throttling someone, but being woken up at 2 am in a start by a talking silver lion had nearly prompted a regression.

Granted -- or so he mentally told himself with gritted teeth as he hurriedly threw clothes on, and then fumbled to find his wand -- Niobe Thursby was likely to have only sent off a patronus if there was a true emergency.  Despite the nine-fingered witch's run-in with the law on the prior Halloween, from what he knew of her, she was both clever and competent.  The last time she'd sent him an urgent summoning, it had been instigated by Dugan Macduff sending threats to the Daily Prophet office.  If she was calling on him again, then something was certainly wrong.

He tried to focus on this, his assessment of Niobe Thursby's character -- and not the fact that it was two in the bloody morning on his night off, and he should have been in bed and asleep -- as he apparated just outside the headquarters of the Daily Prophet.  This late at night, even the great warehouse of the magical world's primary newspaper was dark, no sign of any presence, no lights illuminated inside.  Production, he knew, was entirely animated by spells; there would be no reason for staff to stay late unless they were working on a breaking news story.

But based on Thursby's patronus, she was inside.  Frowning, the Auror surveyed the darkened building, and then the street around him, his fingers carefully laced around his wand.  There was a chance, maybe a slight sort of chance, that this could be some sort of ambush or trap.  He knew that Tawse was on the move again; he couldn't afford to go bursting in with his wand blazing.  But on the other hand, there was no way that he was going to leave Thursby to face anything in the darkness alone.

At the very least, he could afford to take a precaution or two first, even if it meant giving away his presence.

Jonas raised his wand, keeping his voice quiet even though it wouldn't matter once he cast the spell.  "Hominum revelio," he murmured.  The magic burst out of his wand, an invisible presence sent swooping off into the dark warehouse to search for any sign of human presence.

It took a few moments for it to return.  One person inside -- he had a vague idea of their location -- but nothing else.  Jonas frowned.  The message from Thursby's patronus had said that she'd cornered something, not someone.  If that something wasn't human, then the Hominum spell wouldn't hint at its presence.

Oh, well.  If Thursby was here, now she'd have to realize that he was here, too -- the sweeping presence of Hominum revelio was sure to make that clear.  At the very least, she'd know that he hadn't left her to face the darkness alone.

Gripping his wand, moving as silently as he could with his senses alert to the mysterious danger, the Auror started quietly inside.

It seemed like ages before her Patronus returned.  It stayed only long enough to daintily lick its paw, wipe its nose and then it faded away like a snuffed candle.  In the minutes she waited, she'd listened intently.  She heard furniture scrape across the floor.  She heard things falling from desks.  And then she heard nothing but her own shaky breathing as she tried to keep it as quiet as possible.

And then, something.  A quiet wave of magic came through the wall and door.  As it hit her, it gave her goosebumps and her wand thrummed for a moment.  Then it seemed to bounce back the way it came.  "Jonas..." she said to herself.  Whatever the spell was, it must be the Auror's... She was glad he was here. 

As she stood up from her crouch she had to wonder why she'd chosen him over just red sparks.  Indeed, she'd thoroughly humiliated herself when he'd arrested her on Halloween night, and they hadn't spoken since.  What made her think he'd come? Because Jonas Trevelyan was a good person.  And she knew he was the curious sort comfortable with the law being just a little bit bendy...

Even though she was confident he must be here, she was still shaking with tension and fear.  Opening the door would be loud if she wasn't careful, and whatever was out there moving around... it would hear her.

"Muffliato..."  She cast the silencing spell on the door and then turned the knob.  There was no click, no squeak, no scrape.  From the back office, she could see down the aisles of cubicles and desks to the front, but in the darkness there was nothing.  She wouldn't light her wand, she wouldn't call out.  But she had to find the Auror so they could find whatever it was...

CRASH! 

Niobe crouched down and pointed her wand to her right where across something had fallen.  Jonas, if he was here, had to have heard it to.  So instead of going away from whatever it was, she began creeping towards it.  In the dark, she couldn't see anything from over the tall cubicle walls, nothing lurking in an aisle.

It was a strange, eerie feeling, being here in the Daily Prophet offices in the middle of the night.  The enormous abandoned warehouse was really nothing like the Ministry, with its endless twisting hallways and its levels that extended deep underground, but here in the darkness, as he crept silently by desk after anonymous desk, blending together in the shadows, Jonas could almost imagine that he were back on Level Two.

Although surely a midnight excursion there would feel much less like he'd just stumbled onto the set of a horror movie.  No matter what the hour, there was always a light on in the Auror Office: someone mulling over a case, or rushing to file paperwork before a deadline, or even during the rare occasions that everything in the magical world was quiet, stationed alongside the Hitwizards on night duty.  Here in the Daily Prophet office, there wasn't a single soul present, aside from the anonymous presence that his spell had turned up.

And so he crept silently along, attempting to give his eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness.  His senses were as alert as they could be, watching, listening for any sign of life.  Cornered something, Thursby's patronus had said.  Something else had to be here.  But there was no sound, no call from the witch either, so surely it was not quite as cornered as she might have made it out.

Suddenly, somewhere in the distance, there was a crash.  Jonas froze, straining to listen, trying to get a sense of where it had been.  Could it be Thursby?  Did he want to risk calling out, even if it meant he might be turning himself into a target?

He took a deep breath, his wand still at the ready, and tried to think sensibly about this.  Someone else was here, but he didn't know for certain whom.  If he turned on the lights, they'd all be able to see each other.  But if that something else wasn't human -- if it hadn't felt the swooping form of his Revelio spell, or hadn't known what it meant -- then at least at this moment, it probably didn't know that he was here.

There was another scattering noise from the same direction as the first, as if something had been knocked over and spilled off of a desk.  That decided him.  Jonas paused to reach into the nearest cubicle, groping for the first movable object that he could find.  His hand closed around something heavy -- some sort of paperweight, and he picked it up.  Judging the general direction, he chucked it a great deal off from where the last crash had been, and then stayed quiet, listening for any further sound of movement.

Niobe could now hear something rustling around, knocking things over against the East wall near the presses.  Something was there and it sounded just as big as it had first seemed - exploding from the tiny envelope.  And then she saw it.

A glint of orange.  Scales. 

It was in and amongst the iron printing apparatus, a massive serpent.  Niobe had seen one before.  It's massive, poisonous fangs, its savage swiftness.  Runespoor!  It was time to be gone.  The clever stalking was over.  Her heart in her throat, her limbs shaky with adrenaline, the rope-haired reporter immediately began back-tracking more quickly than she'd come.  Walking backwards, keeping her wand trained in the direction of the serpent and the press.

There was little else she could have found in the darkness as terrifying as a Runespoor.  She should have sent for the entire Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures - not her puzzle-phile friend the Auror! She nearly Apparated away, but he'd have to be warned.  They needed to get out.

When she felt she was far enough away, she turned down an aisle that would lead her to the front where she hoped Jonas would be. 

"Jonas!" she whispered in the dark.  "Jonas! It's a Runespoor!  By the press!  It's fecking enormous!" 

She could see his shape now, and was very happy indeed to not be alone.

The Auror stopped short, the lines of his body going still as he squinted into the darkness.  But for all that he might will it, he couldn't see the outline of the creature from where it must be on the opposite side of the room.  The Runespoor was lost in the shadows, an ominous monster as terrifying as anything that his subconscious might dream up.

He stayed still, trying to hear something beyond the quickened beating of his heart.  Dealing with a Runespoor was no easy matter; there was a reason why they rated a classification with more Xs than the most inappropriate film.  No sane wizard would go anywhere near them.  When Adon had been stabbed with a dagger coated in Runespoor venom, he'd been laid up for weeks.  Jonas's last encounter with one had ended relatively painlessly,[1] but he was not about to presume that that had been anything but a fluke.[2]

"Alright, c'mere," he instructed Thursby quietly.  He was still straining to see into the darkness.  Across the room, something clattered, and a chair was knocked aside and tumbled to the floor.  Jonas frowned, steadily adjusting his grip on his wand.  It didn't seem to be coming straight towards them, but if it was as large as Niobe had said, it wouldn't take very long for the three-headed snake to cover the distance.

Which unfortunately left him with quite the conundrum.

It had been months since they'd seen head, hide, or scales of the Runespoor trade.  After a couple of busts the previous summer, when they'd finally cottoned on to the fact that the serpents were being shipped live via Muggle courriers, the smuggling ring seemed to have come to an abrupt halt.  The creature tonight was the first hint of it that Jonas had seen in half a year.

And if something was starting to happen again -- if there was a trail starting to form, one that he might be able to follow back to the Irishman who had murdered an Auror back in 1994 -- then he sure as bloody hell wasn't going to let it slither away.

"Alright," he said calmly.  "Here's what we're going to do."  He really had no idea, but as with most things, he assumed that as he started talking, he'd be able to come up with a plan.  His eyes found Niobe Thursby in the darkness; the witch looked far more pale than he was used to seeing her, and it struck him suddenly that they hadn't spoken at all since Halloween.

"You got your wand on you?" he asked with a frown.  There was another clattering crash -- Jonas's eyes shot to the source of the distant sound.  "How well've you kept up on your charms?"

1.	Runespoor in the House!
2.	Which it was: seeing as how he was protected by the curse of the Egyptian Dagger at the time.

"Have I got my wand?" Niobe echoed with a chiding tone and held it up for him to see.  Of course she had her wand - she was a grown witch, wasn't she?  The stress was making her a bit kipped, clearly, but she gave him the same insulted expression when he asked if she had kept up on her spells. 

"Aye - I'm alright, I think," she said.  Then, "Wait.  Are we going to try and catch it?  No, we need to get out.  We need to summon someone... qualified for this."

There had been an ache in her left hand ever since she'd seen the three-headed serpent, an ache she didn't want to acknowledge, but the throbbing reminder of her hand mangled by the middle head of an escaped Runespoor in Diagon Ally was hard to ignore.  It'd taken a finger and she'd never have it back, save for black magic, and she was feeling shamefully skittish. 

A skittishness she didn't want to show.  She swallowed a lump in her throat.  Hard.  "Or, whatever.  Fine.  Let's do it.  What are you thinking? Binding Hex? Locomotor Mortis? Will that work?"

The question of qualifications had never even occurred to Jonas.  He'd dealt with a small Runespoor once; as far as he was concerned, that made him as good as an expert.  After all, how hard could it be to wrangle a snake?  An enormous, three-headed, highly venomous, possibly explosive, black-and-orange snake...  Even so, the Muggle blokes on television did it all the time, didn't they?  Albeit on a smaller and less potentially deadly scale, but he had a wand.

He would have simply ignored Niobe's worries and charged on regardless, but the dreadlocked witch very quickly talked herself back into the game again.  Jonas flashed her a quick, approving grin in the darkness.  That was the intrepid, completely imprudent and daring reporter that he'd once liked.

Spells, though -- Jonas had to admit that he hadn't thought quite that far ahead.  The red-haired Auror frowned, his forehead creasing as he considered the beast that was hissing somewhere in the not-so-distant shadows.

"Well, it hasn't got legs, has it?" he asked thoughtfully.  "So while Locomotor's a good thought, I can't reckon that it'll work."  It was really too bad that there weren't any movies about this sort of thing -- well, any good movies, Mr Samuel L Jackson's go notwithstanding.  Somehow, he doubted that shooting out a window or shouting impolite terms at the top of his lungs was going to help.

Somewhere across the room, the hissing seemed to have gotten louder -- or perhaps it was simply now coming from more than one head.  Either way, it was definitely getting closer.  It seemed as if the Runespoor's explorations were taking it in their direction.

"Could we trap it in something, d'you think?  Or --"  Under normal circumstances, he would have been a little embarrassed to admit that Thursby likely had a larger repertoire than he did; Jonas had really gone for in-depth mastery rather than breadth when he'd started reviewing spells again after a ten year absence.  But still, he had to know something that would help.  He frowned harder, wracking his brain. 

"Or maybe we just Stun it?"  He glanced sidelong at her, as if to verify the thought.  "That one shouldn't matter whether it's got legs or not, should it?"

Niobe let out her air in a self-steeling puff.  Niobe'd assumed Jonas would have some tip-top-secret Auror spell ready for exactly this occasion, but it seemed like he was winging it.  It didn't inspire much confidence in her, but she was in now, and her sense of adventure and bull-headedness wouldn't allow her to attempt to back out again.  Because it seemed like Jonas had the same sort of problem...

"It'll need to be one hell of a stunner...!" Niobe whispered, but she seemed to be happy with that result.  "Maybe stun each head.  We'll have to be fast."

She had an instant memory of that day on Diagon Alley's worn cobbles, how quickly the massive serpent had moved for its size.  It struck like lightning!  That memory alone was enough to push her back down into a crouch, fueled now to take some kind of ... therapeutic revenge on the beast.  "C'mon.  I'll go for the head on the right.  You on the left.  Then together on the middle..."

Niobe didn't have any good magic to base her strategy on.  Just that if she had three heads, if two of them got stunned out of the blue she figured her middle head might be dazed enough to falter.  Merlin, she hoped this Runespoor would falter...

She crept through the dark along a bank of cubicles towards the press, the last place they'd known the Runespoor to be. 

In no fictional world was this a good idea.  Jonas was well aware of that fact as he tossed Niobe a lazy salute and then crept forward, moving as silently as he could between the rows of desks towards the press.  Splitting up to corner something in a movie was a surefire way to get cornered oneself.  One wrong move, one misplaced stumble or knock into a desk, and it was all too easy for the hunter to become the hunted.

At least, the Auror couldn't help but think cheerfully, his escapades over the past year meant that he had probably moved beyond random Red Shirt status, which meant that he wasn't likely to meet his end being cornered by a giant snake in a dark room.  Heroes could afford to be fearless in the movies; that was why they could take terrifying leaps out of moving vehicles with barely a scratch, or survive nuclear explosions by hiding inside really good refrigerators.  Jonas wasn't about to push his luck that much, but he thought he could probably handle one giant snake hunt in the dark.

He probably could have -- up until his elbow accidentally knocked a stack of something off a desk while he was trying to peer around a corner, and the angry hissing came from not over by the press, but from somewhere near his feet.

"Ack!"  Jonas jumped back, something lunged, and for a split second, it seemed as if he might be relegated to Red Shirt status after all.  But instinct from all those hours of practicing with Adon kicked in, and there was the loud CRACK of apparition, as the Auror vanished and reappeared on top of a desk a few feet away.

"Thursby!  It's here!"  Likely his un-Auror-like squawk had already communicated that, but Jonas liked to maintain some semblence of appearances.  Gritting his teeth, he fired off the red blast of a Stunning Spell, but an avalanche of scorched papers that had up until recently been neatly stacked went flying instead.  How the hell was hitting a giant snake this hard?!

And they moved in.  And no sooner than they'd fully committed to this daredevil pursuit than the action began.  And it began with Jonas.  His shout followed by the red illumination of the Stunning Spell cast a flash of light onto the scene and Niobe got a glimpse of fire-orange scales in the dark.  Papers were scattered like leaves in a storm.  Her home the headquarters had become a battlefield.

Her outstretched wand arm was shaking and she couldn't make it stop.  In the dark, she couldn't find her target - the snakes' head.  She knew she had to stand up from her crouch to see, but her body refused to obey. "Nnnngh!"  she groaned as she tried to turn tension into action.

The sound of the Runespoor moving nearby was enough to send her, though, and she pushed up from her crouch with a shaky battlecry that was far less fierce than she hoped it would be.  "Stupefy!"

Red spellfire slung through the air and again there was illumination.  And she saw it.  In all its tremendous glory.  It was reared up high, its three heads spread wide with fangs bared.

"Stupefy! Stupefy! Stupefy!" She just kept stabbing at the air with her wand, shouting the incantation as blast after blast fired off.  The red bolts slinging towards the beast. 

It was lucky that the morning edition of the Prophet had already gone to print, or all of the stunning spells being slung about would have brought new meaning to 'stop the presses.'  As it was, the flying papers had turned the newspaper office into a print edition of a winter wonderland, as newsprint and parchment rained down through the air.  There were likely to be at least a few unhappy reporters come morning.

The burst of red magic lit up the room, and suddenly, there it was -- the monstrous serpent, its three heads stretched high above him.  Luckily, it was facing in the other direction -- apparently his quick apparition onto the desk had done its trick -- but even from behind, it did not look happy about the sudden change in illumination. 

In unison, the three heads let out an angry hiss, and then Niobe's spells hit them.  One of the heads went limp right away, victim to the Stunning Spell.  The other two whirled to face the source of the attack.  For half a second, their serpentine anger was visible in the light of the shooting spells, but then the Runespoor dropped back to the floor.  With a crash, it began to slither through the desks again -- this time heading right for Niobe.

A few minutes ago, Stunning had seemed like a great idea.  Binding, trapping, leg-locking -- all perfectly valid nonviolent options, up until the point when one came face-to-back-of-head with a giant three-headed snake.  Now that he had, common sense and RCMC-approved capture techniques be damned; there was no bloody way they were risking either of their lives by taking half measures.

Jonas tightened his grip on his wand, flicked it instinctively toward the crashing Runespoor -- which was thankfully making more noise in its movements now, either due to its anger or to the fact that its unconcious head was probably being flung limply into everything -- and snarled, "Fulgur."  The arch of blue lightning leapt from his wand, lighting up the room once more in a brilliant flash as it raced in the direction of the monstrous snake.

Niobe would later take some satisfaction that her spells cast had found a home in the brain of the fearsome beast, but there was no time for self-congratulations now.  The encounter seemed to last both seconds and days at the same time - either reality was far too long for her comfort anyhow.

And thank Merlin for Jonas! Despite being down a head, the Runespoor charged.  But before it could make much progress towards the reporter, the cavernous room was illuminated in a crackling white-blue flash!  It was as if lighting had struck them!

When her eyes adjusted to the relative darkness again, she saw the massive Runespoor laid out.  Smoking. Dead.  All the air slipped out of Niobe's lungs and she sank to the floor against a partition.  She swore colorfully and put her hand over her heart. It was beating madly against her rib cage.  She thought she could hear it. 

"Jonas.  Merlin's sh-...! It's dead.  Is it dead?" she said through hard breathing.  "You killed it.  Well played, sir.  Nicely ... nicely done."  She swore again.

A few more breaths and she stood up slowly.  Having regained some calm, she looked upon the heavy limp serpent, sprawled down the aisle. 

"What. The. Hell." 

The bolt of lightning connected, there was a blinding flash, and then the room went dark.  Jonas bent, gripping his wand tightly and prepared to dodge, as he listened for any indication that the Runespoor was moving.  But there was only the faintest hint of slightly charred meat, and then Niobe's venture into maritime vocabulary broke the silence.

"Lumos," Jonas ordered, raising his wand.  Red light burst from the tip, sending a scarlet cast over the room.  His jaw was still tense as he surveyed the results of their skirmish, and then moved carefully around the nearest desk towards the seemingly serpentine corpse, his movements stiff and sharp.

There was no mistaking the limp creature for anything but a Runespoor.  The orange and black stripes, the three heads; of course, most Runespoors weren't smoking, but that had been a recent status change.  He studied it intently for a moment, watching for any sign of life, and then finally looked back to Niobe.

The witch's run of swears had only barely registered.  Jonas swallowed, suddenly aware of the fact that his heart was beating a little faster than it should, that his knee was aching.  He took a deep breath, putting his free hand on the desk beside him to take some of the weight off.

"I might want to ask you the same bloody thing," he retorted, although there was no malice in it.  A frown had crossed his face; he looked to the witch with a glance that was thankfully more steady than shaky.  "Where the bloody hell did that come from, Thursby?  You cornered that?"

Niobe was confused at the question at first.  "What? Oh.  Erm. Right."

It was difficult to shake the fight-for-her-life she'd just endured, to remember the note she'd penned to the Auror in her hour of darkest need.  He cracked a smile.  "Did I say that I cornered it? Ah, subject object confusion, probably." 

Where did it come from? She tried to remember the quarter hour before...had it even been that long?  Her face dawned recollection.

"A howler!"  She seemed angry now and she was on her feet and on the move again.  She trotted down the aisles between cubicles to her own looking for any trace of the red envelope from whence the beast had erupted.  Her green-shade lamp was tipped over on the desk, her chair was in the aisle.  Papers everywhere.

And the scraps of a red envelop were on the floor, barely in any recognizable level of being intact.  She picked them up. 

"Came from here.  There was a howler, it howled and ... boom.  'Bout killed me then and there.  How'd they do that...?"

There was all kinds of magic that might allow a beast to nest in an envelope, but Niobe didn't know any of it.  She looked at Jonas.  "I'm going to have to report this, aren't I?"

Part of her didn't want to.  But she also didn't want to have to explain all this damage...or incur any further wrath from her... fan.